Tech loses SMB connection?

A recent survey may have put a little damper on any thoughts that SMBs today hold a more positive mindset toward IT adoption.

According to a recent survey of SMBs in Singapore, 32 percent of the 1,068 respondents polled, said that technology has had no impact on their businesses.

Responding to my recent editorial in the ZDNet Asia SMB e-newsletter on this issue, three readers wrote in to share their views and experiences.

Read their comments below, and if you, too, have something to share, drop me an e-mail, or write your comments in Talkback below.

Nowhere to turn
Most SMBs, especially the small outfits, do not know where to turn to for IT ideas that will improve productivity or lower their cost of operations. It doesn't help that most vendors and consultants focus on just selling their products or services.

I turned entrepreneur after being in the IT industry for over 20 years. Lucky for me, I've some idea and I lower the costs of running my business by:

• using a VOIP hosted solution that cost me 2 euros (US$2.50) a month and gives me 1,200 minutes/month of free talk time using my office phone to over 50 countries.
• I pay US$31 a month for a personal CRM system and allows me to send out 50 personalized business greeting cards. This allows me to differentiate my services from my competitors
• I use a Web-based office software called Thinkfree which is free of charge
• I am now thinking of using Google Office so that I can collaborate with my customers and biz partners, again free of charge

Vincent Wong

More is not necessarily better
I feel that it is true that SMB do not see the need for IT. Very simply put, most of the technologies out there do not meet the needs of SMBs.

What exactly is happening right now is that the so-called solutions are forcing SMBs to change their operations to suit the way the technologies are used. It should be the other way around. Furthermore, as SMBs' manual systems are not streamlined enough, implementing an IT plan actually makes an already less-than-satisfactory system worse.

In order for the IT solutions to work, the manual system should be working first. A lot of people out there think that an IT system will help streamline their business operations, which is not the case. Take for example, Singapore's taxi IT system. Although it is very advanced, the system still does not adequately meet the needs of commuters. There are times when there are not enough taxis to meet the demand.

The other issue is that we do not educate our SMBs enough on how they can make full use of a technology's potential, because they do not know what can be used to enable security and convenience, and most importantly they don't know how to determine ROI (return on investment). It is common for the management of SMBs to view IT as an expense and not a tool to expand business. Even if they do know the value of IT, our local IT experts are so technical they cannot clearly communicate how an IT system can benefit a company financially.

We are really in need of visionaries who can think of IT systems that generate business value. Our industry is not creative enough or daring enough to try new things.

Wilson Wong

Tech works wonders
Over the last year, we've spent a lot of energy in taking our business online. With our boss driving this, it's been easy. We upgraded to new desktops and laptops, bought account managers and directors BlackBerry devices, invested in time-tracking software, and bought a new server.

But that was the easy part.

We've also created our own content management system online which is an amazing help. We can log in from our Web site home page from anywhere, and check our media database, sales leads, media coverage, client reports, all in one place.

Implementing these technologies hasn't been easy. We had to fix bugs and made sure we had a backup strategy. And we still panic when the Internet connection is down, but on the whole it's been a wonderful experience. The team now takes 15 minutes to send out a personalized press release to 100 names, we know exactly what the status is of prospects in our sales pipeline including the value, and we work from home, the client's office or even Spinelli's Coffee if we want.

Besides this, we also use Intranets.com, Surveymonkey.com, Factiva, and other existing options for convenience. We'd definitely be in a different place without technology.

Sonya Madeira
Associate Director
EastWest PR

What do you think? Drop me an e-mail, or write your comments in Talkback below. Published letters will be edited for clarity.